Affordable housing without rezoning: Guest opinion

Portland's Bureau of Planning and Sustainability opposes a developer's request to re-zone residential property in Walnut Park to allow a 60-foot tall commercial/mixed use behemoth into this quiet neighborhood. Now the developer is asking the Portland City Council to give his project special treatment by promising to provide affordable housing. The Council is scheduled to vote on the matter April 25.

Walnut Park residents' objections to the proposed re-zoning of the Alberta Abbey property to commercial from residential has little to nothing to do with NIMBY-ism or lack of support for affordable housing. It has everything to do with Walnut Park neighbors opposing this 21st-century version of red-lining.

But to understand why that's true, you need to know something about Walnut Park, our history, and our people.

Walnut Park is approximately 80 acres, platted in 1904 and bounded on the north by Killingsworth, on the south by Northeast Alberta Street, on the west by North Commercial Avenue and on the east by Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.

Unlike Irvington, Alameda, Laurelhurst and most other Portland neighborhoods, Walnut Park never had exclusionary ethnic clauses written into our property deeds. Consequently, Walnut Park has a long history of welcoming minorities discriminated against by the majority of Portlanders and Oregonians who were white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. For example, Irish Catholics comprised a significant portion of our population in the early decades of the 20th century even as the Ku Klux Klan was promoting -- and passing -- anti-Catholic legislation against us.

And as Portland's African-American population increased 10-fold during the 1940s, racist city officials, racist bankers and the racist Portland Realty Board used red-lining and other discriminatory housing practices to restrict African Americans to Walnut Park and Albina neighborhoods. As a result, Walnut Park has one of the most diverse, integrated neighborhoods in Oregon history. And contrary to claims of gentrification, we still have many black families, Catholics and other minorities.

Then there's Walnut Park's long-standing support of affordable housing. Out of our neighborhood's 24 square blocks, four blocks' worth is devoted to subsidized housing. That's one-sixth of our neighborhood. Compare that to Irvington, Alameda, Laurelhurst, Grant Park, Overlook or University Park. Getting the picture yet?

Nearly one-third of Walnut Park's surface area is devoted to those in need: include the full block taken up by Multnomah County services, including Meals on Wheels and senior services; the full block occupied by the state unemployment office; and the nearly full block of Salvation Army facilities.

I have heard nothing but support among my neighbors for affordable housing going in at the Alberta Abbey site. What we object to - strenuously - is the imposition of commercial zoning that brings a vastly out-of-scale development built right up to property lines with no set-backs and none of the protections provided by residential zoning.

Margaret O'Hartigan is an 18-year resident of Walnut Park, and author of a walking guide entitled "Walnut Park Revealed."